Visa to help brands pinpoint ad spend through personalised retail offers

Visa plans to partner with retailers to personalise cashback offers using its cardholders’ shopping data in a bid to generate revenue from the platform’s promise of clearer insight into the most effective areas to spend marketing budgets.

It is the financial firm’s foray into the crowded deals market and debuts in the UK next year following trials in the coming weeks. While rival services from the likes of Nationwide and Barclaycard let people redeem the offers in-store by presenting a voucher on their device, Visa is introducing an automated alternative.

Visa cardholders who sign-up to the service, developed by technology business Edo, receive the cashback automatically when they pay for their goods. Offers can be viewed from an online portal, which uses purchase data from the linked card to personalise offers such as retail discounts and money-can’t-buy experiences.

Potential retail partners are being told the service will leverage Visa’s scale, which is around 94% and 55% of the UK debit and credit cards respectively, to hit existing customers with personalised offers or to target promotions to those more loyal to rivals.

Similarly, smaller retailers and restaurants are being told they can offer rewards to people who might have otherwise gone to a different venue.

Visa’s aim is to beat rival services by making it easier for advertisers to gauge their return-on-investment so that they can uncover the most fruitful areas to spend marketing budgets. The insights are gleaned from an aggregated pool of anonymised spending data.

Crispin Rogers, director of targeted marketing solutions at Visa Europe, says the “unique proposition” will capitalise on “the days of the one size fits all approach to advertising and customer marketing” ending. With one pound in every three spent on a Visa card in the UK, the business wants to further monetise the anonymised purchase data of its customers, he adds.

A long-term plan for the application is already being mapped out that will stretch to social media as reported by Business Reporter. A Visa spokesman declined to share any further detail on the matter but told Marketing Week the social media element would play an “important role” in shaping the personalised offering in the future.

Visa’s push into the deals market follows the offerings of Barclaycard and Nationwide. Barclaycard made its move last May when it touted its deals service as a “satnav for savings”, while Nationwide is working with Visa to offer customers discounts from a raft of local and national brands.

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